The trouble with anyone deciding to 'update' the IRC protocol is that it will be a self-appointed person/group, so there's no reason for anyone else to adhere to what they say if it conflicts with their idea of what IRC should be. Personally, I'd probably end up being one of them since there's a very high likelihood that anyone wanting to join such a group for updating IRC are doing so because they want a lot of changes to the protocol - leaving those who think major changes will be a very bad idea (eg. me) out of it.
For each of the changes in the original post there's a good reason (I think) why they shouldn't/can't be implemented into IRC (I've replied with them on another site where tidy_trax posted this thread). Quite frankly I think 99% of the changes that people come up with for IRC that could put put into effect without disrupting everything are useless and unnecessary, and the ideas which actually would benefit chatting would, largely, require changes far too sweeping to be implemented in IRC and would be much better off put into a new protocol.
You might say that this attitude wil leave IRC with no way forward for improvement and that it'll eventually die. And that's probably true. But people will always want to use the internet for chatting so if IRC ever does die it'll only be because another, better, protocol has supplanted it. Better for IRC to die because it's been superceded then for it to die because of massive rifts due to groups trying to enforce their ideas of 'IRC 1.1' on the chatting populace.
